Glory and Gore
by Morgan Buzolic
Summary: Being a caster girl was hard enough, but what happens when your twin sister has the utmost desire to attend Mystic Falls High School? And on top of that are a reincarnation? Things end up getting pretty weird for Zoe Duchannes. { Rewrite of Middle Gilbert }
1. The Return

**A/N; AND IT'S FINALLY POSTED! yayayayayayay. OMG I'm like posting this as I'm watching The Originals and if my home girl Rebekah dies, I will cut somebody. like forrrreal. she is my queen. **

**BUUUUUT HOPE YOU ALL ENJOY THE CHAPTER. AND YES THE FC HAS CHANGED TO ZOEY DEUTCH, BUT SHE PERF AND THEN I JUST HAD ZOE HAS HER NAME BECAUSE UH, I DONT LIKE THE NAME HAYDEN NO MORE!**

**but okay read and enjoy!**

**Soundtrack; Snap Out Of It - Arctic Monkeys, Down - Mat Kearney, Bleeding Out - Imagine Dragons, All Around Me - Flyleaf, Let It Go - The Neighbourhood, Coldplay - Paradise, Sail - AWOLNATION, Pumped Up Kicks - Foster The People, Clocks - Coldplay, Round and Round - Imagine Dragons. **

* * *

"_You probably think this world is a dream come true; but you're wrong"_

* * *

Flecks of sunlight danced into the room from the large windows of her bedroom, covering the hardwood floors of her bedroom in sun patches and covering her sleeping form in warm shadows of the sun. She hummed contently, rolling over onto her stomach and clutching the blankets tighter to her tank top covered torso.

Desperately, she wanted to stay in bed all day and dream about getting her and her sister away from this god forsaken curse that was placed upon them and every other woman caster in their family. She did love being a caster, even if it came with several awful traits, she still loved it. She loved the feeling of her magic coursing through her veins, the sparks of the magic igniting lowly in her stomach, she just loved it all. She just hated the curse that was place upon her and her sister, by the time of their seventeenth birthdays they would turn dark. They would use their magic for every horrible thing they could think of, they would forget about how much they cared for everyone they knew, they would be purely evil and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it.

Rolling over on her back, she exhaled loudly and brought her dainty hands to her face, brushing back the stray locks of her curly brown hair. Thinking about the curse, and everything else that was wrong with her family dampened her whole mood causing her to slam her hands down at her sides on the mattress. The white duvet fluffed in various areas because of her hands.

A soft knock rasped at her door, causing her head to turn in the direction of the door and sit up straight in her bed. She knew it was not her uncle because he would have simply just waltzed into her room, requesting her presence. Like the arrogant man he and ever other man in this family was.

Lifting her hand, she waved down the door slowly, making it disappear to her own eyes but not to the person standing on the other side of the door. Who she saw standing there was not a surprise to her, at all. It was her fraternal twin, Lena, standing outside of the door with her arms crossed over her chest and a sour expression on her face. As always. Waving her hand upwards, the old oak door reappeared, replacing Lena's angry figure.

Circling her finger around the doorknob, the door unlocked itself and open slowly, allowing the younger twin to walk into the older twin's bedroom.

"Morning." Zoe said casually, gripping the white duvet that covered her bare legs and pulled it off her body unceremoniously. Her body twisted so that her legs were now hanging off her large bed, and her hands were rubbing her the sleep from her eyes as Lena walked past her bed and towards her closet.

"Morning." Lena replied softly with a small nod at her sister.

"What're you doing, Lena?" Her feet touched the cold hardwood floor, despite the sun patches that covered it, causing her to hiss silently to herself and recoil her feet. She hated the cold with almost every fiber in her body, the only perk of winter is the jackets. Jackets are always cute.

"Looking for a tank top." She said simply, reaching on her tippy toes to look in the drawer that held various colored and multi patterned tank tops. "Uncle Macon did not wash my tank top like I had asked him too."

"Well, then maybe you should learn how to do your own laundry." Zoe replied knowingly as she found the will to press both of her bare feet onto the cold hardwood floor. Her fists clenched at her sides as she stood up slowly, resisting the urge to sit back down and take the cold temperatures off of her feet.

"Says the one who can't even walk on cold floors." Lana snorted, grabbing something out of the drawer of tank tops before closing it. She held up a white tank top to her sister. "Can I take this?"

"Yeah, sure whatever." Zoe said nonchalantly, waving her sister off as she walked towards the bathroom in her room. "What time are we leaving?"

"Quarter after ten." Lena replied without hesitation, her voice full of excitement.

"All right. Meet you downstairs." She replied tiredly, clearly not wanting to go to this school that Lena had been going on and on about for months, or a month, but still, it felt like months. School just was not her thing, sure she was smart and could finish her homework faster then someone could watch an episode of Spongebob, but she was not allowed to use her magic, she was not allowed to kick back and relax because she already knew half of what every teacher was teaching. Like stated, she's smart. Before they went to any school in this town, Macon had wanted them to meet one of his old colleagues from when he taught at Duke University, her name was Jenna Sommers, she had a niece in their grade and wanted all three girls to socialize so they went into school knowing someone.

Zoe thought the whole idea was entirely bogus, her and Lena could adapt perfectly fine without knowing some girl that was supposedly going to make the rest of their high school experience a breeze. Or until, their seventeenth birthdays.

She pushed open the bathroom door with ease and dragged her feet across the cold, marble flooring of the bathroom making her bare legs cover up in large goosebumps. Bringing up her hand again, she moved her fingers slowly in the shape of a circle, causing the hot water to run from the shower head. Turning her head, she simply looked at the door and it shut loudly, allowing the bathroom to fog up from the heat of the water.

She shed her tank top and underwear quickly, leaving the cold air to harass her body minutely before she stepped into the shower. The scolding water turned her skin a bright pink as the beads of water padded against her skin, soothing her to flutter her eyes closed and day dream.

* * *

_Picking up the skirt of her dress, the girl ran quickly away from whoever was chasing her, but she was not afraid, she was laughing loudly as she ran deep into the woods. She dodged various trees, shrubs, and other obstacles as such perfectly, not turning her head once to see how close they were to catching her. _

_Her laugh, along with a much deeper and throatier laugh, echoed throw the misty, empty forest as she continued to run freely, enjoying ever moment of it. This is what she loved to do, she loved to be free, she loved to just be able to do whatever she wanted with whoever she wanted to, and she wanted to be free. She wanted to be free with him. _

_After jumping over a large, fallen over tree, she stopped to catch her breath but turned to face the direction she had come from. She was waiting for him, and sure enough after a moment or two of waiting, he was there._

_He stood on the broken maple tree, breathing heavily as a smirk took the shape of his lips at the sight of her. Her brown hair was braid back loosely, a few strands of hair sticking out to frame her face. There was a line of dirt on her cheekbone, making her look even more beautiful if that was possible. He was so in love with this girl that he did not even know it yet, and neither did she, but everyone else did. _

"_I think I win, Kol." She said coyly, sauntering up to the tree slowly. Her dark eyes trailed up from the ground, and to the tree, then to him. Her eyes traced his muscular arms shamelessly before they darted up to look at his strong jawline and every other flawless part of his face, but when their eyes made contact she felt her cheeks redden and her breath caught in her throat. They both knew what one another were doing, but neither of them said a word. "So," she started slowly, a smirk that matched Kol's grew on her lips "What's my prize?"_

"_Aren't I a good enough prize, darling?" He asked stepping down from the dead tree and landing with a loud thud in front of the brunette, her smirk had stretched into a small smile as she lowered her head to look at their feet. His feet were placed sideways against the soil, trying to avoid stepping on her childish feet. _

_Looking up again, she scrunched up her face and tilted her head, pretending to think of an answer. She knew her answer, and it was yes, he was certainly a good enough prize for her. "No." Her words betrayed her mind as she took a step away from him, letting the wide smirk form on her lips again. "Maybe, a new dress, or a new pair of boots, since running around in the woods with you has gone and ruined mine." _

"_No one asked you to run around in the woods with me, Zoe." Kol defended, throwing his hands up in the air as he did so. She shook her head as a small, delighted laugh passed her thin lips. _

"_Actually Kol, you did." She said knowingly, tucking a strand of her dark hair behind her ear. "So, about those boots?" She was prioritizing now, she needed the boots more than the dress, but she wanted him more then the boots and dress combined. _

"_I'll be sure to get right on it, darling."_

* * *

Her dark eyes fluttered open, her dark lashes coated with beads of water as she stepped out from under the steamy water to grab the shampoo bottle. As she opened the cap of the bottle slowly, she could not help but think how weird that was, how real that felt for her. It was like she had lived it before, like it was a memory of hers and not just a dream with a man that she had made up in her head, because she had done that before with Zac Efron copies, but she knew that was a dream, but this it just felt so real to her that it made her skin crawl.

Squirting the blue shampoo onto her head, she raised her hands to her thick, dark mound of hair and began massaging the soap into her head with large, slow circles. As she did this, she just tried to push the strange dream, or memory, or whatever it was from her head and think about the _lovely_ day ahead.

"Macon." A woman with ashy blonde hair opened the door to the three of them, her glossed, pump lips stretching into a cheek aching smile. "It's good to see you again."

"You as well, Jenna." Macon nodded curtly before side stepping, giving the woman a perfect view of his two nieces, who were complete opposites of one another. "I would like you to meet, my eldest niece Zoe."

"Hi." Zoe said politely, leaning forward to shake the woman's outstretched hand. "Pleasure to meet you, Ms. Sommers."

"Jenna." She corrected, smiling genuinely at the teenager before stepping to the side of the door. "Please come in, Elena and Jeremy are in the kitchen." So there were two people Zoe had to meet today, great. One clearly was not enough for her Uncle Macon, no, no, no.

Despite her thoughts she stepped past the woman, who was now known as Jenna, and stepped slowly into the house. Her dark eyes roamed around the foyer of the house, taking in all of the old family photos that consisted of two kids, a girl and boy, and two parents.

Zoe knew that this Jenna woman was only these kids aunt, and she could understand that. After all, her grandmother had been her legal guardian up until last year, when Ridley turned dark, then Macon stepped in, knowing that he was the one that was more fit to protect the two of them from Ridley and Sarafine.

She adverted her eyes from the high walls and ceilings of the home and began to slowly walk down the short hallway towards the kitchen. Her one hand attached to the forearm, rubbing mindless circles through her leather jacket and into the skin on her arm out of habit.

As she walked into the kitchen, the boy from all of the pictures was sitting at the table, staring intently at his hands that rested on the table. He was obviously older from when the picture was take, but it did not look like age was kind to him thus far. The greasy bangs of his hair hung over his dark eyes, like a curtain of misery, because he certainly did look miserable sitting at the table. His pale skin was darkened, by what looked like dirt, maybe he was one of those high schoolers that never took showers and walked around barefoot all of the time. There were so many kids in Hawaii that did that, it was ridiculous.

Her eyes adverted from the gloomy boy to look at the girl from the pictures, her long brown hair was curled neatly and all pushed to one side of her neck as she used a large knife to chop a loaf of bread into bite size chunks before throwing them negligently into a large wicker basket.

"I'm going to take a wild guess here," Zoe started, shoving her hand of the arm that had been rubbed pointlessly into her back pocket. "And say that, you're Jeremy." She pointed to the boy sitting at the table, who had now averted his gaze from his hands to look up at her with his bangs pushed back. "And that you are Elena." She pointed to the girl behind the center island, who nodded briskly at her, a hint of a smile on her lips.

"That would be us." She sighed, setting the knife down onto the marble island slowly, before walking around said island to get to Zoe. "It's nice to finally meet you.." The girl trailed off, not knowing whether if this was Zoe or Lena.

"Zoe." She finished for her before turning her head to her twin, who had just stepped into the room. "This is my twin, Lena."

"How are you guys twins?" Jeremy questioned the two Duchannes as he stood up from his chair at the dinning room table. "You look nothing alike."

"There is a thing called fraternal twins." Zoe suggested sarcastically, stuffing her other and into her back pocket. Discreetly, Lena nudged her sister in the ribs with her elbow, acting as if it we a scolding for her sarcastic tone.

"Sorry about her." Lena said in her overly polite tone that she used when she met new people. "She's a bit irritable in the morning."

"It's nearly noon." Jeremy commented from beside his sister, eyeing up Lena curiously.

"Did I say morning? I meant all the time." She feigned a bright smile at her sister as she wrapped her around her sister's leather clad shoulders.

"You do remember who the older twin is, don't you?" Zoe asked, glancing sideways at her sister who was sideways glancing her as well. This is what they always did, they had this sibling banter that mostly everyone had, but not everyone cherished it like they did. They cherished it so much because they knew that one day, it could be gone forever, they knew that one day they could use their powers against one another and end up killing each other, that one day they would be without each other.

"By three minutes." Lena scoffed, pulling her arm off of her sister's shoulders and letting it drop at her side.

"And thirty-two seconds." She reminded presumptuously, taking her dark eyes off of her twin and back to the pair of siblings in front of her. "So, what's the game plan for today?" She said, clapping her hands together loudly, signaling that she was ready to get on with this outing and get it over with.

"Uh, we were actually headed to a wake for the mayor." Elena said solemnly as she dipped her head to look at the floor. If these two were going to a wake, they why were the Duchannes twins even here? Did Macon plan on bringing them as well, like this was some way to acquaint with the townspeople? God, that is truly depressing.

"Oh." Both sisters said quietly, giving the mayor of Mystic Falls a moment of silence before Zoe spoke again. "I'm sorry that I brought up the topic." She said sincerely, bowing her head towards the teens.

"It's fine." Elena reassured with a nod of her head. Zoe watched her curiously as she brought her hand up to toy with the heart shaped locket that hung low on her chest. It was an _ugly_ locket, that was for sure. It looked like it had been pulled from the tenth century, but at the same time, it looked familiar to Zoe. She had no idea where she had seen it before, but it did look strangely familiar to her.

"Do you know if Macon plans to bring us with you guys, or..?" Lena's trailing off voice pulled Zoe's attention from the locket, shaking the feeling of familiarity that she felt.

"Uh, Jenna said that your uncle knew Mayor Lockwood and his wife, so he wanted to pay his respects." Jeremy informed the two girls. _Sneaky bastard_. Zoe thought to herself, but said nothing to her sister or to Jeremy and Elena as he continued on, "Guess he decided to bring you guys along with him."

"Guess so." Zoe huffed in agreement, hitting her hands lightly on her denim covered thighs. She was only supposed to meeting one girl, Elena, but instead she met her little brother as well, Jeremy, and now she was going to a wake for a man she did not know but somehow her Uncle Macon did. Her day turned out fantastic, did it not?

* * *

People scattered the entire lawn of the estate, all dressed in the same boring, small town stereotypical way. Men had nice dress shirts on that were unbuttoned one button at the top and not tucked into their best pair of old, worn out blue jeans. Half of the women either had similar shirts to Elena's, one with a low cut neckline so you could either wear a camisole under it, or show off your cleavage just a little to much. The other half of the women were dressed in knee length floral dresses, with the color cardigan that matched their dress most. It was truly sickening how pale this town as to Zoe.

"Looks like the whole town has turned out." Jenna mused, pulling Zoe from her analyzation of the entire town.

Elena shuffled in her purse for something, probably her telephone, as she responded. "Yeah well, he is.." She trailed off partially as she picked her head up from her black shoulder bag to look up at the large home in front of them. "He _was_ the mayor."

"Why do all this now?" Zoe questioned as she walked between Elena and Lena. "I mean, why not wait until the funeral?" She said, referring to the donations of food, sobs and supporting words of others.

"It's what people do." Jenna huffed as she climbed the stairs with the rest of the Gilbert clan at her side and with the ensemble of the Duchannes. "The Lockwoods were there for Macon when he lost his sister and went through all of this." Was she talking about Sarafine? Because to both Zoe and Lena's knowledge he only had two sisters, Delphine and Sarafine. One light, one dark. "But I promise it'll be quick, we'll drop off the food, pay our respects, then go to the Grill and grab something to eat."

"In and out?" Jeremy questioned, giving his aunt a look of approval.

"Sounds like a plan." Lena chimed in, smiling at Jenna as she did so.

"You guys, go ahead, I'll uh, I'll be right there." Elena said slowly as she stopped walking and turned her head back to her aunt from whatever had stopped her from walking in the first place. Zoe's eyes casted over quickly to a man who was staring at Elena intently, a sad, sour look upon his features as he did so. "K?"

Zoe turned her gaze back to Elena, or where Elena had previously stood since she had not waited for a reply from any of them and walked towards the man. He was attractive, yes, and congrats to Elena for getting a man that was as good looking as him, but she felt that nothing could compare to the man in her dream from earlier. That man, who was also known as Kol, was truly astonishing.

"I'll show you guys around." Jeremy said, nodding his head to the small outdoor hallway to his right. Zoe took a minute to regain her thoughts, but when she did, she simply nodded in reply and followed Jeremy.

She has got to stop dozing off like that.

* * *

After five minutes of walking with Jeremy and Lena, and talking with them, she realized that they were subconsciously pushing her out of the middle of the two of them so they could walk together, and tried to quickly change the topic of conversation after Zoe had involved herself. She knew that her sister was not purposely trying to exclude her, and she honestly did not mind the exclusion if it were a normal case.

The eldest Duchannes had caught the way that Lena looked at the youngest member of the Gilbert family, that lustful gleam in her brown eyes, the unintentional smile that was always spread across her lipstick coated lips, and the way that her cheeks were constantly flushed. Lena Duchannes was falling for Jeremy Gilbert extremely fast, and as her older sister, Zoe would not allow that.

It's not that she wanted her sister to be miserable, it was the fact that the two of them were not allowed to be happy. It's not because of their mother, who was the evilest caster of them all and had it out for them, or because of fate frowning upon the entire Duchannes line. It was because of the curse, the curse that had been placed upon their family line in 1864. When Genevieve Duchannes tried to bring back the one she loved from death, and she succeeded, but using a spell that powerful and old it had turned her dark, initiating the curse. The spell had turned her into a dark caster, so dark that she instantly killed the man she succeeded in reviving. All in all, the spell and the curse were useless. Therefor, the person they were not allowed to fall in love because of the what if, according to Macon.

She could not let Lena be in love with this boy because, of the consequences. He would ultimately die at the hands of a caster, most likely Sarafine, their mother. Possibly even Ridley, since she had become Sarafine's personal slave. She could ask Ridley to kill herself, and she probably would, because that's what having so much power does. It turns peoples fear of her and her wicked wrath into loyalty. They would go to any lengths to get Zoe and Lena to turn dark, even though it was unavoidable if the did not try, they still wanted to. They wanted to because when they brought them into the dark side of the caster world, they would proudly say that this was because of them.

Plus, a mortal and a caster were never meant to be together; it was against the caster rules, and the rules would not just change for Lena and this boy.

Sighing heavily to herself as she dragged a heavy hand across her forehead, she debated on telling her uncle about Lena and her predicament, or possibly just calling Aunt Delphine and telling her. Maybe even Nan or Larkin.

"You know, mysterious people don't really fit in here in Mystic Falls." A deep voice caught her attention, causing her to turn her head to the side as she looked at the source of said voice. _Great. _She thought bitterly to herself, it was Elena's friend or boyfriend, or whatever he was, but it did not matter to Zoe. All that mattered to her was how much she did not want to have a conversation with this man.

"Really?" She asked incredulously, her dark brows arching as if she could not believe what he was saying. "Then why are you here?" She crossed her arms over her chest as she leaned her body back against the brick pillar behind here.

The man before her gave her the smallest of smirks, his eyes gleaming wildly with amusement and rebellion as he looked between her and the yard below them that was littered with townspeople. "Damon." He said, resting his eyes on her form. Zoe's dark eyes flashed down to his waist, where his hands had rested, one with a drink and one empty, to see that there was no outstretch of his hand, offering her to shake it. She almost smiled in relief, she hated shaking hands with a ton of strangers. For starters, they were strangers, and when you do not know someone, you do not know where they have been and what kind of germs they have. Obviously, Faye was a complete germaphobe. "Damon Salvatore."

"Zoe." She said with a small nod of her head. "Zoe Duchannes."

"Duchannes?" Damon asked, his brow quirking into a questioning arch as he mimicked Zoe's position against the brick pillar behind himself. "As in a very distant relative of the oh so powerful Genevieve Duchannes?"

"How do you know about Genevieve?" She asked slowly, her eyes growing slightly wider in surprise and in fear. Surprise, because he looked like he was twenty-four at the most and and 1864 was one hundred and forty-six years ago. Fear, because this could just be one of Sarafine's other personal slaves that she had sent to look for her daughters.

"We were _besties_ growing up." He said sarcastically before he lifted his the glass of amber liquid he had in one of his hands up to his lips, his eyes glued to the transparent bottom of the glass.

"Like I'm supposed to believe that." She snorted, her eyes decreasing to their normal size as she let her body release all the tension that had gathered when he mentioned her ancestor.

"She did not like me very much when we were kids." His voice was oozed with venom, but she knew he was telling the truth, just by the way he kept staring into his glass of alcohol or the way that his dark brows darted up to his forehead when he spoke. He was a very snarky man, she already knew that when Elena had left their crowd of six for him earlier, and the whole eyebrow thing, spiteful words, and nonchalant stance did not make it any less obvious for her.

"Well, what'd you do?" She pushed the urge on, dying to get some information about who this man was or _what_ he was. He could have just been the town drunk, rambling historical stories and adding his own twist to them, or he was being truthful and he really did know Genevieve. Either one was possible at the moment.

"What makes you think I did anything?" He asked dubiously, raising his head from his glass for the second time during their conversation, but he only did it so he could narrow his ice like orbs in her direction.

"Well, you seem like a very snarky and sarcastic man, Mr. Salvatore." She stated knowingly, her crossed arms adjusting themselves so she looked dignified as the words came out of her mouth.

"Oh, and you're such a joy to be around." His voice dripping his sarcasm as he raised his dark brows briefly before focusing his attention back to his alcoholic beverage. "She didn't like me because I accidentally broke one of her precious necklaces, something that was a talisman of her power, or something voo-dooey like that."

"Can't say I blame her." Zoe admitted, shaking her head in justification before stopping her head movements to look at the lawn of people.

There was a small pause in the conversation, caused by Damon's uncertainty and his want to just walk away from her and find Elena, as they both looked out at practically the whole town of people just standing around in the late mayor's lawn, chit chatting amongst themselves much like Zoe and Damon were. "I'm surprised. There's no overly dramatic _or_ overly annoying questions coming from that sarcastic little mouth of yours."

"Well," she began, pushing herself off of the brick pillar "You're either another supernatural inanity, like a vampire, or an incubus, or something that would be able to live long enough to know Genevieve." She did not want or need to tell him about how her mother wanted to turn her and her sister evil then use them as personal slaves. "I'm going to go with vampires, because incubus don't live that long."

"Ding ding ding. We have a winner." Damon sang, holding his glass in the air highly and swinging it around slightly. Zoe turned her head in his direction once again, her brows arching in a judging look as she watched him swing around his glass. When he noticed her stare, he dropped his hand and pointed at her accusingly. "Don't look at me with those judgy little eyes of yours."

* * *

Ending their little discussion, Damon informed that he had to look for some woman named Katherine, and apparently she looked just like Elena. Zoe insisted on helping, since it was better then just standing around and waiting for Jeremy and Lena for the remainder of the event. As Zoe was helping him _track_ Katherine, as he put it, he had told Zoe that this woman was also from 1864, so which meant she knew Genevieve. When he told her this, all she could think was actually how many people in this town knew her ancestor, and she could not decipher if she was happy about that or not.

"Tried to track her, but she's gone." Damon said in clear defeat, his eyes glancing towards Stefan and Elena as they both looked up at him and Zoe. Damon closed his eyes and shied his head away as he saw the bloodied abdomen muscles that belonged to his brother. "Oh, cover up Fabio. We got a crazy ex on the loose."

"Zoe?" Elena asked as she quickly pulled down her boyfriend's blue, cotton t-shirt to cover up the deep wound on his torso. "What're you doing here?" Zoe opened her mouth to tell Elena that everything was fine and she knew about all of this, or some of it, the girl continued talking. "Damon, why did you bring her here?"

"Don't get to excited, Elena." Zoe muttered under her breath sarcastically, crossing her arms over her chest loosely. She casted her eyes sideways, towards Damon, when she heard him let out a dry chuckle.

"No." Elena said instantly, turning her mocha eyes back to the girl she had just met this morning. "I didn't mean it that way, it's just..."

"Oh Elena, calm down." Damon complained, his face scrunching up in annoyance. "Your little friend here is a very distant relative of a very old friend of mine." The caster rolled her dark eyes and snorted at the vampire's arrogance. "You'll never believe it Stef," he began, feigning enthusiasm "this is Zoe Duchannes, Duchannes as in Genevieve Duchannes."

Despite Damon's tone, that Zoe found incredibly unnecessary, Stefan looked up at the young caster, a look of shock, fear, and curiosity all gleaming together in his emerald eyes. Seeing the look in his eyes, she nodded slightly in his direction, a faint smile on her lips. The smile was not there because she was happy to meet him, _another _person from Genevieve's life. It was because of the small amount of fear she saw in his eyes.

Macon always said is was good for everyone to fear you, just a little bit.

"Better watch out, looks like Katherine's trying to steal your guy." Damon said, taking the topic of conversation off of Zoe and her lineage and bringing it back to Elena and Katherine. Which, the caster was extremely thankful for, not to mention.

"That's not what's happening." Damon's younger brother looked at his girlfriend, reassurance in his eyes and voice.

"Isn't it?" Damon questioned, placing his hands on his hips like some mad super model. "I mean it's only fair since I went after your girl." His hands moved from his hips and crossed over his chest.

"I'm gonna go check on everyone." Elena lowered her gaze from Stefan to look at the grassy earth that was beneath her feet before she looked up at Zoe. "Do you wanna come with me?"

"Yeah, I have to talk to Macon anyways." She nodded her stiffly, as she pushed back the dark, stray pieces of her hair. Zoe thought that going with Elena was better then staying with Damon and his sibling, enduring the awkward conversation the two had about Damon trying to steal Stefan's girl, who Zoe presumed was Elena.

"Let us when you guys are done." Elena huffed out as she bent over and grabbed her bag before storming off with an extremely bored Zoe in tow.

* * *

Shrugging off her jacket, revealing the blue tank she had been hiding all day with said jacket, she folded it neatly over her one arm as she walked into her room with her sister, Elena, and Elena's friend Bonnie behind her. Neither Duchannes girls were too adamant on telling everyone one of the Gilbert's friends, but Elena had shared that the girl was a Bennett witch. So, they kind of felt obligated to tell Bonnie, since they had something in common besides their hair color.

The four of them did not really say much as they walked into Zoe's room and dropped their things neatly in her walk-in closet like Lena suggested, knowing that her sister hates to have a messy room at anytime. After they did that, Zoe moved to her bed and rested her back against the headboard with Lena at her side, Elena sat sideways at the very edge of the caster's bed so she could face Bonnie, who had pulled out Zoe's desk chair and the twins.

"So, how are casters and witches different?" Bonnie asked as she turned her body on the chair so she was seat comfortably before pulling her denim covered legs on the chair with her.

"As you know Bonnie, there is no set destiny for a witches powers, it is your choice to either practice black magic or to practice white magic, or good magic, whatever they call it." She began, her eyes flashing to the door when she saw it being pushed open slightly. She was ready for Macon to walk in and begin to ramble on about how telling these girls was not a good idea, but Zoe felt like she would be spending a lot of time with these girls, and not just because every other person in Mystic Falls was a complete bore. Instead of it being Macon it was Boo Radley, Macon's dog. His black, wolf like neck craned around the door to look at the room full of girls, and without hesitation, Zoe patted a spot near her on the bed, signaling for him to come to her.

"With caster's, it is different. On the day of your seventeenth birthday your powers are chosen for the light or for the dark. When you turn dark you forget everything and everyone you care about, of course you remember them, but they mean nothing to you anymore. All that matters is your powers and how powerful you are. Our family, or the women in our family, have been cursed because of Genevieve, the one that Damon was talking about before." Zoe directed the last part of the sentence to Elena, who nodded briefly in acknowledgment. "She was so in love with this man that when he died, she used the Book of Moons and found a resurrection spell for him. The spell was pure black magic, and so old that it had caused her to dark in a second. Like I said, when you turn dark you care about nothing but your powers, so as soon as he woke up from death, she killed him. Making sure he was dead for good."

Bonnie and Elena shared a look with one another, probably thinking up some escape route to get out of this place. To be fair, Lena and Zoe had warned them about what they were about to hear. That it was not going to be some sort of fantasy story about how they casted spells to make all the candles in one room light at once, or how the charmed people with their magic to give them free things. Their family's magic was tragic.

"How many days until your seventeenth birthday?" Elena asked slowly, like she was debating on asking as she spoke. Lena and Zoe look at each other before holding up their hands. On the curve of Zoe's hand, between her thumb and pointer finger and on Lena's palm there was a number scribbled in black, sharpie ink.

_156_

"That is how many days we have left until our seventeenth birthdays." Lena huffed out and wiggled her fingers sadly. Zoe had a feeling that this night was going to be a _long _one.

* * *

"_Grape?" Kol asked as he popped the purple, circular fruit into his mouth. He outstretched his hand to Zoe, who sat next to him on the riverbank, which was full of similar grapes to the one he had just eaten. Graciously, she plucked on grape out of his hand before popping it into her mouth._

"_Thank you." She sang sweetly as she chewed on the fruit. "In twenty years, what'd you think our lives are going to be like?" Zoe asked suddenly, turning her head towards him as she took another grape out of his hand. Her feet swung back and forth slowly, the tips of her toes dipping into the cold water. _

"_I think you'll be married." He said as he gnawed on another grape and looked at her. "I think you'll have a large happy family, and you'll forget about me." She frowned at him and furrowed her brows intensely, causing the worry wrinkles on her forehead to show. _

"_What're you talking about?" She reached for his hand, but instead of grabbing a grape, she traced the side of his hand and fingers with her own fingers. "I could never forget about you." _

"_You'll be so happy that you'll forget about me. You'll be happy with the three children that you've always wanted and with the perfect husband." _

"_Kol." She said softly, grabbing the under neath of his hand. "Stop talking like you do not matter to me, like you are not one of the most important people in my life. Because, you are, you matter to me, and you are one of the most important people in my life, probably the most important, and you know it." Kol tilted his hand so they grapes poured out unceremoniously and bounced into the river._

_Twisting his hand to fit in the palm of her hand, he interlocked their fingers together. Looking up at him, she smiled timidly. "You're going to have to get all of those grapes because, I wasn't done eating them."_

* * *

**A/N; I totally liked the first flash back thingy better then I did the one like right above, right thuuuuuuuuuuuuuuur. **

**Hope you liked it! Three reviews until the next?**

**-Morgan Buzolic**


	2. Brave New World

**A/N; This took me so many freaking days, oh my guacamole I think I might fried my brain. Since all of the lovely snow New Jersey has been having, I have stayed up for the past three days straight since I have had no school to write this. It's now 7 am on Valentine's day and I just want to die oh my goodness, but whateva. Hope you all like the chapter, and yes Damon and Zoe are obviously going to be very good friends hence why I changed it to a Damon/OC/Kol, there won't be anything romantic between the two unless you guys want it to happen or it just sort of happens. **

**OH AND I know Zoe is pronounced the same as Zoey, but I just wanted to clarify that it's basically like Zo but with an E. It doesn't really matter, but ya know, thought I'd fill you in, but enjoy!**

**Soundtrack; Lorde - Biting Down, One Republic - Secrets, Lorde - Bravado, Lana Del Rey - Video Games, The Neighbourhood -$TING, Neon Trees - Animal, The Black Keys - Strange Times, Coldplay - Viva La Vida.**

* * *

"_Somewhere deep inside these bones; an emptiness started to grow."_

* * *

Her small feet touched the cold tiles of the kitchen floor, sending shivers throughout her entire body as she shook in coldness. Her hands wrapped themselves around their opposing biceps and held on tightly in desperate need to warm up her cool skin. As she walked slowly to the pantry of the kitchen, she got colder every step she took because every step was a new tile that was freezing and bone chilling. Her shoulders shook as she released her one hand from her arm, searching for something she could eat for breakfast.

"If you're so cold, then maybe you should put some clothes on." A voice suggested from the doorway smugly, a voice she recognized as neither her sister or her uncle, but the eldest and so far her favorite Salvatore.

Zoe craned her neck slightly to look at the raven haired vampire, her eyes scanned over his body curiously. Hew was wearing a black button up shirt, the sleeves rolled to his elbows and the first two buttons of his shirt were undone. His legs were covered by a pair of black leather jeans, the caster girl felt that Damon could only pull off this look and look as handsome as he did.

"You know, if you wanna see me naked, all you have to do is ask." He said arrogantly as he caught her analyzing stare. Her eyes dragged up his body hastily to look at his face, when she saw the wide lipped smirk on his face and the suggestive wiggle of his brows, she scoffed and turned her head back to the pantry.

"I think I'll pass, I really don't feel like throwing up last night's meal." She said as she reached up on her tip toes to look at the very back of the pantry. Usually, she would just have Kitchen make something, but today she wanted to make something for herself. She knew it was because she wanted to get her mind off these strange dreams she was having, that was her goal for the day, so here she was making breakfast and talking to one of two vampires that she knew. It was somewhat of a good distraction. "So, Mister Salvatore, what are you doing in my house? I thought vampires had to be invited in."

"Well, I was invited in." He said knowingly, walking behind her to peer over her shoulder and look into the pantry. "Your little twin was on her way out to go see Jeremy, and she invited me in."

"Right, she wanted to see if he was okay since you killed him last night." She said calmly, walking half a step closer to the pantry in order to eliminate the proximity between her and the vampire. Her eyes ran over the contents of the pantry and she was satisfied when she saw a large box of pancakes. Reaching forward a little bit on her tippy toes, her arm reached out for the box that was all the way at the pack of her pantry, but she could not reach it. She was too small. She huffed loudly as she lowered herself back onto her flat feet.

"Well, I was a little angry." He snapped at her, reaching up to grab the box of pancake batter for her. "Katherine paid me a visit, then I paid Elena one and blah blah blah, I killed Jeremy."

"So descriptive." She said with an obvious roll of her eyes as she turned around to face the vampire that had so politely gotten the item of her desire for her. "Thanks." Zoe muttered with a small, gracious smile on her lips as she reached to grab the box of batter from his hand, but he pulled it back over his head causing the caster to frown deeply. "Damon, what're you doing? Give me the batter."

"How demanding of you." He taunted as a lifted the box higher above both of their heads. Zoe reached up on the tips of her toes and stretched her arms upwards as much as she could, but Damon was a head taller than she was, and he had longer arms than she predicted. A noise of annoyance sounded from the back of her throat as she lowered herself back on her heels. "Relax yourself, oh powerful one. I want to ask you a few questions about your witchy ju-ju."

"Witchy ju-ju?" She asked incredulously as she cocked her one of her thin brows into a questioning arch and crossing her arms over her chest tightly, unknowingly pushing up her cleavage as she did so. "You mean my magic?"

Damon's eyes raked over the caster's body carelessly, admiring the way her black tank tank top highlighted her fading tan and how the tank top left little to the imagination when it came to her chest. He also loved the way that the red shorts hugged the curve of her waist, leaving him to lick his dry lips at the sight.

The vampire felt the box of pancake batter slip from his fingers and hit the floor with a loud thud as his brain somersaulted in pain and a low groan of discomfort erupted from him. His hands went to his head immediately, his long fingers wrapping in his midnight hair as the pain grew more and more painful. Dropping to his knees unceremoniously he tucked his chin into his chest as his continuous groans became yells of pains.

"Zoe." He seethed; his fingers wrapped tighter into his midnight hair, puling at it relentlessly before he felt likes his fingers were on fire and instantly he released his hair from the death grip. His glacial eyes looked at up at the caster sheepishly, silently begging her to stop whatever she was doing, because it hurt, _immensely_. "Zoe." He tried again-louder-immediately the pain subsided and he released a breath of relief as he collapsed on the cold tile floors of her kitchen. He glued his fingers to the cool tiles still feeling the smallest amount of burn in them as he breathed heavily.

"Oh my god, Damon." The elder of the Duchannes twins breathed loudly as she rushed to the vampire's side. She dragged a heavy hand across her hand across her face before she kneeled down and placed both of her small hands on his broad shoulders. Gently, she rolled him over onto his back and slid her hands from his shoulders to his muscular pecks.

Closing her eyes, she rubbed soothing circles into his shirt with the pads of her thumbs as the light side of her magic decided to make itself known. Momentarily pushing the dark caster in her away, she hummed an angelic tune that was ultimately as spell, but to anyone it sounded like one of Coldplay's greatest hits.

"Really, Menace? You're going to sing to me as you massage my irresistible pecks?" He asked her as he squinted his eyes open to look up at her, his voice oozing with arrogance and bitterness that he saved just for her. His head lifted, so that his chin was touching his chest again, he watched her fingers move against the fabric of his shirt as a purple-ish glow began to illuminate from his fingers. "How romantic." His voice sarcastic as he dropped his head back to the cool tiles, essentially slamming his head back into the flooring causing him to groan in pain.

"Idiot." She muttered with a small roll of her eyes that were sealed by her lids, but nonetheless, the century old vampire saw the way her lids moved with her eyes causing him to smirk slightly at the sight of her.

Removing her hands from his chest, Zoe raised herself from her knees slowly, the dark magic reappearing back in her system to even out the balance of good and evil between her, which she honestly did not mind. Honestly, she thought it was good to have some evil in you, but when you were a power thirsty, manipulative dark caster, that was basically royalty in their world like her mother than it would not be so bad to have some good in you either.

"Since _you_ ruined my pancake batter, _you_ get to take me out to breakfast." The caster said pointedly as her dark eyes glanced to the once perfectly intact box of batter that had now been smashed from the bottom, the floury pancake batter oozing out the seems.

"What?" He asked in sheer disbelief as her raised up self up on his elbows, his eyes narrowing at her in pure annoyance just like the way his brows shot up. "I'm not buying you breakfast. You're the one that used your caster magic to almost kill me."

"Yes, you are. If you hadn't been eyeing me up like I was a prostitute then we could have had pancakes here, but guess not. " She answered heedlessly before turning her head from the vampire that lay before her and to the white molded doorway on the other side of the kitchen. "Kitchen, can you clean up this mess please? It seems like Damon is a little incapable of cleaning at the moment."

Damon stared at the caster wildly for a moment. Who the hell was she talking to, his mind reeled as he continued to stare at her.

"If you continuing staring at me Damon, Kitchen may have another mess on her hands and it won't be pancake batter." She wanted to say his blood, but she digressed as she turned on her heel slowly and began walking towards the grand staircase that was smack-dab in the middle of the house. "I'll be down in like fifteen minutes, or so." And with that, she was walking slowly up the stairs to her room, swinging her hips tantalizingly as she did so.

* * *

"You're _so_ lucky I like you." Damon said, vexation clear in his tone as he watched Zoe saunter down the stairs, taking all the time she wanted in the world. His wandered over her body again, but this time he did it discreetly as he could. Her torso was covered by another black racerback tank-top, or maybe it was the same one he had no idea, her legs dressed ing a pair of black denim jeans with a wide rip at her right knee. As he looked at her feet he knew that this girl was practically made for him, if he was not in love with Elena and Katherine, because on her feet were combat boots that were not the fake Steve Madden ones. They were authentic boots from a police academy or military academy, somewhere that you could not just buy them if you wanted to. "Where'd you get those boots from?"

"By the way you are so wrapped up in yourself, I would have thought otherwise." She said as she walked past the doorway of the kitchen, where he was currently supporting himself, and to the coat rack next to her overly enormous front door. By the size of that thing you would think that her Uncle Macon was expecting a whole circus to invade his home. "Use to date a military official, got him to steal me a pair." Taking her black leather jacket off of the golden hook that it had been residing on since she had gotten back from the Jeremy catastrophe, she shimmied her left arm into the correct sleeve then did the same with her right arm.

"You're like two years old." Damon retorted "How did you end up with a military official?"

"Actually, I'm sixteen, Salvatore." She replied knowingly as her hands buried themselves under her thick, curled tresses pulling them up from the inside of the collar of her jacket and letting her locks of hair lay across her back freely. "But if you must know, I was fifteen then and I was quite the persuader back then."

"And your powers of persuasion were.." He trailed off in a suggestive tone, hoping she would finish the sentence with something like 'mind blowing sex' or 'blow-jobs every night', answers he would love to hear come from her lips.

"Wouldn't you like to know?" She asked snidely as she nodded her head towards the massive front door, indicating that she was ready to leave and spend the day with her favorite vampire.

"Yes, I would, hence the question." He answered in a duh tone as he walked his way over to his friend, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. "Now, since you took _forever_ to get ready, what do you want for lunch?"

"I only took ten minutes, asshat." She deadpanned.

"Really? Felt like ten centuries." He said with a roll of his shoulders, causing Zoe's elbow to nudge him roughly in the ribs. "Can't stop touching me, can you?"

* * *

"It's the same as the vervain bracelet Elena gave you." Stefan said deliberately as he hand Jeremy-his girlfriends youngest and only brother-a small vial of vervain. Jeremy had been fixing the strap of his heavy backpack and looking for a certain someone through the large crowds of people as he accepted the small amount of the herb.

She told him that she wanted to go to his school and even though it was the only school in Mystic Falls, he still felt himself getting a little over excited at her declaration. He liked the Duchannes girl, she was extremely easy to talk to for him, she was not judgmental, she was just a very lax person. Which was a far cry from her sister.

The Gilbert boy had no clue where he stood with Zoe Duchannes, and to be brutally honest, she was a bitch. She had a very hard exterior and was not easy to talk to, at all, he had tried talking to her yesterday at least once or twice but she would just shut him down. Unlike her sister, she seemed to be extremely judgmental, just they way she looked at people from the wake screamed: _I'm judging you_. She was going to be very hard to warm up to, that's for sure.

To Jeremy, the Duchannes sisters kind of reminded him of the Salvatore brothers. Lena being Stefan's equivalent and Zoe being Damon's equivalent. Except, the Duchannes were twins, they were girls and they weren't vampires. They were just normal, normal people that were okay with the supernatural, like him. Well except, he had that whole weird resurrection ring thing going for him.

"To protect me from compulsion." Jeremy concluded, bring the herb up to his nose to smell through the glass. He really had no reason to smell the herb, he was just curious, its not like the smell was the reason it affected the vampires. Or was it?

"Vervain is toxic to vampires." Stefan said clearly, but lowered his voice a little to keep people from hearing the word vampires.

Jeremy stared at the vial for a second, twisting the glass in his fingers before looking up to his sister's boyfriend with furrowed brows. "Like poison?"

"Yeah, it's very poisonous." Stefan said with no hesitations as he outstretched his arm to lean it against the gray painted lockers. "It'll keep him out of your head."

"But, why vervain?" Jeremy asked curiously, relaxing himself into the wall of lockers. His eyes searching for her round, childlike face again but to no avail, he was met with the faces of the people he has known for majority of his life.

"I don't know." Stefan admitted thoughtlessly, rolling his shoulders into a shrug. "Certain natural herbs, roots, and any other elements that are just harmful to vampires."

"Like a stake to the art?" He asked with a small tilt of his head as he continued to play with the vial in his hands.

"Right, but it has to be wooden." The vampire in the situation confirmed as he tapped the human's chest-right over the heart-for the affect of it.

"You're pretty confident in yourself telling me all the different ways I could kill you." Jeremy had no desire to kill Stefan, he liked this vampire, he was okay with this vampire. Damon on the other hand, Jeremy hated Damon, and he was entitled to. Damon had snapped Jeremy's neck without hesitation, not even knowing if he had had the resurrection ring on or off.

Stefan laughed at Jeremy through his nose, turning his head to and fro on his shoulders. "Jeremy, if I thought you wanted to kill me we'd be having a much different conversation." Stefan's smile everlasting as he looked at Jeremy "K?"

"Yeah, Damon is the one that deserves it." Jeremy said distantly and slowly, unaware of how Stefan would react to him saying that he wanted to kill said brother. Jeremy knew that Stefan was not the happiest person in the world to have Damon as a brother, but they were still blood.

Stefan's smile fell slowly as he looked Jeremy up and down quickly, concern in his emerald eyes. "I want you to forget about Damon, all right? He's a hundred times stronger then you, and you know right now he's not _stable_. You gotta try and move forward." Stefan patted Jeremy's chest again, as if it were a push for him to move on.

"I was killed by a vampire and brought back by a magic ring." Jeremy asked in a ticked-off tone as a humorless laugh escaped the boundaries of his mouth. "How do you move forward from that?"

"Right, well today we have a nice little distraction courtesy of the slavedriver Elena. Hello Elena." Jeremy kind of tuned the two of the two of them out as his eyes scanned the crowd of high school students for the third time in the past five minutes.

You know what they say, third times a charm.

His eyes took in Lena and her innocent beauty, she was wearing a beige colored tank-top that looked slightly big on her; probably because it was her sisters, with a faux leather jacket that was a rich orange-brown color that compliment the red tints in her hair beautifully. From her waist down she had a maroon high-low skirt that exposed everything from the knee down, including her stylish combat boots that matched in color with the jacket she was wearing. His eyes trailed back up her body, licking his lips subtly as he came in eye contact with the woman who was currently clouding his mind.

Lena gave the boy a pointed look, like she was scolding him for staring at her, but he could not help but stare at her, she was beautiful.

A part of him felt kind of guilty though, Anna was gone, staked by his uncle and here he was swooning over her like Anna never existed to him. He could not help it though, he was a raging hormonal teenage boy, and Lena had been the first person since Anna that he could really open up to and just talk to.

"Jer?" Elena said, sounding completely annoyed with her brother, pulling him from his thoughts about the two most important girls in his life at the moment.

"Yeah, yeah." He huffed out, turning back into his locker briefly before turning to his sister again. "I'll set up the goldfish toss, all three-hundred goldfish, it's gonna be epic." A fake smile plastered on his lips as he closed his locker loudly before he began walking to someone who hopefully had no desire to annoy him today. Lena.

"Hey." She sang softly yet excitedly as she tightened her grip on the strap of her shoulder bag. Her thin, red lips widened into a sickening sweet smile as she peered up at the Gilbert boy with carmel orbs.

"Hey." He sang back, matching the excitement in her voice. He noticed the way that she clutched her bag, probably a nervous habit she had, but he wanted to break that for her. Therefore, she would be less nervous around him. "Let me take your bag." He smiled even wider at the short girl in front of him as her cheeks flushed a deep red.

"No, today is not about helping Lena." She said pointedly, waving her finger at him as she spoke in the third person. "I'm here to help you today, so, what do you need help with?"

"Wanna help me get three hundred goldfish?" He snorted loudly as he stuffed his one hand into his pocket and the other grabbed onto the strap of his blue backpack.

Lena bit her bottom lip between the rows of pearly whites in her mouth as a smile stretched onto her red lips. "Thought you'd never ask."

* * *

"Damon!" Zoe muttered angrily through her teeth as she was hand cuffed to the passenger door of his car. Her small wrist relentlessly pulled on the chain as the vampire smiled sadistically at her.

"I would say stay put, but it's obvious you're not going anywhere." Sending a wink her way, he turned on the heel of his boots that were almost identical to hers and bounced up the steps of the Lockwood Estate.

The caster groaned loudly as she gave a long, painful tug of her wrist before relenting. Her body was hunched over as she rested her hand cuffed arm on the little armrest the door had. "There has got to be a compliment in here somewhere."

She could use her magic to set her wrist free, or simply break the chain with her other hand and then book it home or call her sister to pick her up and bring her to that stupid carnival the high school was having, but at the same time she did not want to. There were two reasons for that. One being that she was afraid that Damon would be livid that she left him, but it's not like he handcuffed her because he did not trust her or anything, he was just being an ass. Yet, there was that small underlying fear that if she disobeyed him that she would end up like Jeremy was last night, only difference is she does not have some funky resurrection ring. The second reason was-believe it or not-she actually enjoyed the vampire's company. Which was shocking since she rarely enjoyed anyones company but her sister's. It was just easy to be herself around the raven haired vampire because he was the same way, only he was over one hundred years old, drank blood, and you know killed people for fun. Zoe just liked to be around him, simple as that.

Hiccuping, Zoe used her pointer finger of her free hand to hook underneath the chain of the handcuffs. Closing her eyes, she concentrated on just wanting to break her hand free from it's restraints and how she hated the way the metal handcuffs rubbed against her skin, how she just hated the cuffs in general. Lifting her finger up into the chain briskly, the chain snapped in half and the lock of the hand cuff on her arm came undone because of the force of her magic. Sighing happily, Zoe rubbed her now unrestrained wrist and leaned back against the comfortable leather seats in his car.

Gathering the remains of the broken handcuffs, she rolled down the window of the his Camaro and threw the remains into the mayor's lawn, not really giving a damn about who found them. It was just a pair of handcuffs. Rolling up the window again, she leaned her against the cool glass and closed her eyes, tiredness washing over her as her heavy lashes laid against her check.

* * *

_Pulling her arm back, she tightly closed one of her dark eyes while the other was narrowed on her target. Her fingers adjusted themselves against the backend of the arrow subconsciously. Straightening her shoulders and making sure that she had the shot, she let go of the bow and watched it fly speedily towards the tree she had aimed for. _

_Besides running around in the woods, eating grapes by the river and successfully annoying all of their siblings, this is what the two of them did together. Archery. _

"_I think I'm better than you." She said happily, watching the arrowhead wedge itself deep into the large maple tree. Tucking the dark strands of her hair that fell loose from her braid behind her, she smiled at Kol victoriously. The sleeves of her brother's shirt-that had been rolled up to her elbows-hastily slid back down her arms again causing an annoyed huff to pass the boundaries of her lips. _

"_Mad that Zane's shirt is just a little to big for you?" He taunted while flashing his million dollar smirk that mad Zoe melt into the palms of his hands. Sauntering the short distance to her, he began to roll her sleeves up her arms again. He knew that she was completely capable of doing this simple task herself, but he would jump at any chance to have skin to skin contact with her, even if it was something as simple as rolling her sleeves up for her. He just loved the feel of her smooth forearms brushing against the back of his knuckles, he just loved her in general. "You can't be better than me darling." He whispered into her ear as he stepped behind her, his fingertips brushing against her cotton clad skin as he trailed them up from her elbows to her collarbone. "I'm the one who taught you."_

_Zoe's eyes had fluttered close by now, her arms subconsciously lowering the bow in her hands as she leaned back into Kol's touch. She could not help herself, just the sight or thought of him made her weak at the knees. She knew she was in love with him, she knew that it was him that she wanted to be with for the rest of her life, but she also knew that Kol only saw her in the light of a friend and even though that drove her absolutely made, she was happy that he was even in her life. "That's not true." She argued softly as his fingers lightly touched the skin of her collar bone, causing her to shiver involuntarily. "Technically, Niklaus taught me the aspects of archery, you were just there watching."_

"_You're lying." He replied in a sing song voice as he dipped his head towards her neck, he watched the way that the skin on the back of her neck was raised in goosebumps from his hot breath. The sight of this caused him to let out an airy chuckle against her skin, feeling under his hands how her body shivered in response. _

"_Am not." She mocked his sing song tone, her lashes pressed deep into her cheeks as her lids clenched together tightly in anticipation. Her arms slacked at her sides, the bow dropping to the ground as her arms turned to jelly, but neither of them paid any attention to that. Her bottom lip was worried between rows of blunt teeth as she felt the tip of his nose glide across her skin in an agonizingly slow way, but either way, she enjoyed it. _

_His lips had faintly even touched the skin of her neck when the bush next to them began to ruffle. He felt Zoe's body tense underneath his grip as she turned her head towards the bush. The canvas of her cheek was directly in front of him and he still could not shake the intensity of the moment they shared like she easily did, so he pecked her cheek quickly with his lips before letting her go altogether and walking to the bush. Briefly, he looked back at Zoe as he walked the distance to the bush and let out the shortest of chuckles when he saw that her face was beat red. _

"_I wasn't spying or anything." Kol's little brother, Henrik, popped out of the bush just as Kol was about to separate it with his hands. At the sight of Henrik, Zoe could not contain her laughter. His long, dark hair was ruffled and had leaves and twigs sticking out of every end. _

_Kol turned his head back to look at Zoe, was a giggling mess, and giggles were contagious because he turned back to his youngest brother and began laughing along with Zoe. "Well, at least you were just you and not some rabid animal." _

* * *

The Duchannes girl groaned loudly as a heavy hand had pressed into her shoulder and urged her to wake up. Sleepily, she pushed the hand away from her arm and turned on her side in the car seat so that her back was facing the hand.

"Menace." The voice sang-the voice she recognized instantly as Damon's-causing another groan of annoyance and tiredness to emit from her lips. "Get up."Usually, she would not have been one to respond or listen but she knew that he was not going to let her go back to bed any time soon.

Opening her eyes slowly, her small hand immediately raising to shield her eyes from the bright sunlight that was streaming through the windshield, she frowned at him. "Don't you know that it's not polite to wake a girl from her slumber?" She asked quizzically, her voice still groggy.

"Don't you know that I'm not polite?" He asked rhetorically with a bewitching smirk on his face as she leaned more towards the center console. "Get out." He deadpanned and all of the sudden the passenger door had swung open, allowing more sunlight to creep into the dark car.

"Are you seriously kicking me out of your car?" She asked incredulously with both of her dark brows raised in question.

"No." Damon snorted "I'm properly introducing you to the wife of our very dead mayor, so get out of the car." The caster stared at him, uncertainty filling in her dark eyes causing the boisterous vampire to move his hand in a way that told her to hurry it up as his brows raised in an impatient way.

Responding with a huff, she inched out of the car, the grogginess from her sleep still evident to Damon. She had every right in her mind to zap him into unconsciousness for waking her up, but she had no desire to heal him again. Plus, her uncle said that she should not always let her anger drive her actions since it was a darker trait of hers, one that Lena did not have. They both had the rage that every other Duchannes had, but Zoe was very short-tempered where as Lena was very passive and reserved. The two were complete opposites.

"_Your_ very dead mayor." Zoe corrected "Why do you want me to meet her anyways? I probably won't be in town for long before I blow something up, or before Lena does." It was true. They only had 155 days left until their seventeenth birthdays. It was only a matter or time before their magic-most likely Zoe's-got out of control and they had to leave again. It had happened pointless times before and the elder twin had no idea why Lena even bothered to try anymore. They were technically doomed.

"Because, she knows you're uncle and she asked to meet you." At the admission, Zoe frowned at Damon for the second time in the past two minutes. She should not have been surprised by the mayor wanting to meet her since yesterday Jenna mentioned something to them about being there for Macon when Sarafine vanished, but yet she still was. Not only was she surprised, the screws in her head were turning continuously as she physiqued herself out that this was a trap, that this was on of her mother's schemes to lure her and her sister in. "Why are you panicking, Menace?" He asked her seriously, pulling her slightly from her state of panic, as he lowered himself to be eye level with her and put his hands gently on her shoulders.

She looked at him like he was crazy, she was not panicking. Okay, yes she was, but she did not want Damon to know because he would either hold her against her or he would be pulled into the cross fire. Neither of those were better then the other.

"Don't give me that look." He said as his hands began to rub gentle circles into her shoulders in attempt to calm her down. "I can practically see the wheels turning in your head, what's wrong?"

Biting the inside sides of her gums worriedly, the caster began to shift her wait from one foot to her other as she debated on either lying to Damon or actually telling him what was going on. "I'll tell you when you take me out to breakfast." She stated simply, releasing her gum from her teeth and halting her weight shifting movements. "But, you have to promise that you will not leave my side in there, got it?"

Damon looked at her with a puzzled gleam in is glacial eyes as his posture straightened so he was at full height again. "Zoe.."

"Got it?" She asked again, more harshly this time.

"Got it." He agreed with a huff as he move to shut the car door.

Out of sheer nervousness, Zoe had wrapped her small leather clad arm around Damon's large, beefy arm. He peered down at her, sensing her complete and utter fear, so he let her stay put on his arm. Plus, it never hurt to have a pretty girl on his arm.

This was the only thing Zoe was really afraid of, her family. Well, the dark side of her family. The ones that are light like Nan and Aunt Delphine, she loved to be around. Or her incubus of an uncle, or her shapeshifter cousin Larkin. Even though Larkin was dark, he was not on her mother's side, therefore she did not fear him. Zoe feared her mother and her older cousin, Ridley. Two of the most powerful dark casters she ever met.

"Relax." Damon said pulling her out of her trance as he opened the door to the Lockwood mansion for the second time today. Looking up at him again with a sliver of hope in her dark pools, she squeezed his arm tightly before letting it go all together.

Walking into the mansion, she got to truly appreciate today since the day before it was jam packed with people she did not know and did not really want to know. It was certainly beautiful, but it was nothing new to her eyes. Her Nan had a house almost identical to this one, except in Nan's home the walls were darker as well as the flooring and the interior decorations were older and certainly more valuable.

"Damon." A light voice called from one of the side rooms causing the turn of Zoe's head. A middle aged woman who had a bob hair cut with blonde highlights and laugh lines near her eyes and lips stood behind, or maybe in front from the woman's point of view, a couch and looked at the two of them with a large smile on her face. Her skinny yet tall from was cloaked in a knee length olive green colored dress, a thin, brown leather belt at rib line of her dress.

"Carol." Damon said pleasantly, honestly surprising the caster but she showed no look of surprise has she smiled timidly at the woman followed his large footsteps into the study. "Carol, I would like you to meet Zoe Duchannes. Zoe, I would like you to meet Carol Lockwood."

"Hi, it's wonderful to meet you, Ms. Lockwood." Zoe said in her politest tone as she stepped forward to shake the woman's hand.

"We've already met before." Carol said, which caused almost a thousand red flags to go up in Zoe's mind, but despite herself Zoe kept the pleasant smile plastered on her lips. "Right after your mom disappeared, when you were a baby. Your Nan, Emmaline, was with your Uncle Macon and she had you and your sister when my husband and I went to send our condolences." The Duchannes nodded her head curtly, letting her hand drop from the woman's as half of the flags in her mind dropped as well. "You have grown into such a beautiful girl."

"Thank you." Zoe replied graciously as a subtle pink grew on her cheeks.

"Please sit, Damon and I were just talking about the council." She insisted, pointing the the couch on the left instead of on the right, where she had stood from. Zoe let the smile slowly fall from her lips as her face relaxed as she walked to the couch and made herself comfortable on it.

"So, uh if you don't mind me asking, what exactly is the council?" Zoe asked unsurely. Damon did not mention anything about some council discussion. She had to remind him later at breakfast, or lunch, that she loathed politics.

"The council is a group for the founding families who are in charge of commemorating to the foundation of the town." Damon explain simply, not knowing if it was okay with Carol for him to indulge in the vampire hating part of the council.

"But, behind hidden doors, our goal is to protect the town from vampires." Carol informed quietly, like someone was eaves dropping on them. Zoe opened her mouth to say something as she looked at Damon, but the vampire gave her deathly stare that told her to close her mouth and shut up. "Which brings me to my next subject, with Richard gone I'll be acting as entering mayor until the elections." She said almost defeatedly, but still had a some what of a happy gleam in her eyes. "And I'm going to need someone to spearhead the council. I'd like that person to be you." Zoe silently watched the exchange between the two, and soon realized that the mayor probably had no idea that Damon even was a vampire, but she was not going to say anything. Getting on Damon's bad side was not needed.

"Whatever you need, Carol." Damon said slowly, his looking appreciative as he accepted the position. Why was Zoe even here again? "As a founding family member, it's something that's very close to me so, I would be honored to help keep this town safe from vampires."

The three people in the quite room heard a loud, deep cackle from outside, causing all three heads to turn into the direction of the front door. In walked in a teenage boy, probably around Zoe's age, who was only dressed in a pair of gray basketball shorts that hung dangerously low on his hips, allowing Zoe to look at his bare, glistening chest as much as she wanted and a pair of black basketball shoes on his feet. Maybe _he_ was why she was here. Behind him was a man who was slightly older then him that looked like it could be his older brother or maybe his uncle. The brother-slash-uncle was dressed in a gray tank top that was drenched in sweat and a pair of navy blue basketball shorts.

"Zoe, why don't you go meet my son, Tyler?" The newly appointed mayor asked the young girl as she pointed to the shirtless, younger one in the room over. "And can you shut the doors on your way out?"

"Uh, okay." Zoe said with a small shrug on her shoulders as she began to stand from the couch, discreetly unzipping her jacket so instead of resting only an inch or two from the hem of her neck line, in now rested on her breast bone.

Walking out of the room quickly to let them finish their discussion, her hand connected with the thin shaped door knob as she pulled it closed behind her, feeling complete satisfaction with herself as she heard the knob click, indicating it was closed.

At hearing the click of the knob, both Lockwood men raised their heads to look at the office doors. They were not expecting the beautiful girl that stood before them with an easygoing grin on her face.

"Hi." Tyler said through deep breaths as he straightened to his full posture, which was not much taller than Zoe herself.

"Hi." Zoe replied lucidly with a small wave of her hand. "I'm gonna guess you're Tyler? Your mom told me to come introduce myself." He nodded his head, egging her to go on. "I'm Zoe. Zoe Duchannes."

"Is that French?" He asked curiously, and she could not help the frowning of her brows and the laugh that escaped her lips.

"Uh, yeah." She said with some sort of an impressed look on her face as she began to itch the back of her neck in awkwardness. "My mom's French and for some reason my dad kept her last name." She knew the reason, it was because she wanted her daughters to sound powerful and the Duchannes line was an extremely powerful line of casters.

"Talk about whipped." Tyler muttered insensitively to himself, but it was still clearly audible to Zoe and the man next to her.

"Yeah, well then she lit him on fire and now she's missing so," Crossing her arms across her chest tightly, she shrugged her comment would not have gotten to her if it was not about her dad. Granted, she barely knew her father or remembered him, but she felt like she owed it to him to defend him from harsh words of people who had no understanding of the situation since he had given her the gift of life. A very messed up and dreadful life, but a life. "On that note, I think I'm gonna head to the car."

Not waiting around for his or his brother-slash-uncle's-apologies, she walked out of the door that the two had come from and back to her friend's car in hopes to get some more sleep.

* * *

Closing the large, wooden door behind her with her foot, Zoe trailed behind the raven-haired vampire almost silently as he sauntered through the large estate.

"I thought you were taking me out to breakfast." She reminded as she stopped walking behind him and crossed her arms over her chest.

"I am." He said as he stopped walking as well and craning his neck to look back at her. "Consider it Restaurant de Salvatore, just this once."

"You're going to cook for me?" She asked skeptically, she had no desire to be poisoned as payback for almost killing him this morning.

"No." He snorted instantly as he began walking throughout the house again causing her to follow close behind. "You get to select your choice of cereal."

"Vampires eat things other then people?" She asked in mock surprise. "Shocking!"

"Well, we don't really like to but we can." He said knowingly, ignoring her IQ lowering comment as he turned into the kitchen. "You know, to keep up appearances and what not."

"Right." Her voice skeptical as she hopped up on the center island of the Salvatore kitchen. "Like you're whole little thing with the council and the mayor?"

"Right." He responded, digging in the pantries. Pulling out three boxes of cereal from the pantry, Frosted Flakes, Coco Puffs and Trix, he set them on the counter ignoring her question. "Queen Elena doesn't have much of a selection, sorry." He responded so unapologetically the it made her just want to break his fingers, but she digressed.

"Frosted Flakes." She said without much of a decision before tucking all of her fingers into her palm, besides her middle and pointer finger, then lifted her hand. As her hand lifted so did the remaining boxes of cereal, pushing her hand out quickly the cereal boxes flew into the pantry. Stretching out her fingers, the door to the pantry shut almost automatically making her lips grow into a small smile.

"Look at that, you could be on an episode of _Charmed_." He sneered as he bent down to reach into the refrigerator for the milk. As he turned his body back to her, she stuck out her tongue childishly causing him to snort for the millionth time today. "So, explain about your mother lighting your father on fire."

She frowned at him. "Way to kill a conversation, Damon." She watched as he shrugged his shoulders indiscreetly before turning to one of the many cupboards in the kitchen. "I don't really know what happened with the two of them, but I know that she was already dark when they met, he just had no idea. I think that the only reason she had pretended to be in love with him so she could have kids and continue on the Duchannes bloodline, because once you turn dark you only care about yourself and your power." She paused to drop her head and look at her feet which now swung in their own small circles. "Once we were born, she didn't need my father anymore so she killed him. Lena doesn't know about our mom being as powerful as she is, or alive even, because it was dangerous enough for just me to know that she was alive."

"Wow." Damon said as he set a black cereal bowl on the white counter. "And I thought I had family problems. Dark? Is that like the word for the way Genevieve turned so evil in like a split second?"

"Yes." Zoe said with a slight nod of her head, not bothering to cast her eyes upwards to look at the vampire who was serving her breakfast well after noon. "She's the one who started the curse."

"Curse?" He asked as he reopened the already opened box of cereal and then spread the inside bag open. "What curse?"

"When Genevieve brought the man she loved back to life she turned dark-as you know-but when she did that she doomed every other female Duchannes. The curse takes place on our seventeenth birthday's, when our powers will be claimed for the light or the dark. Only problem is that we always turn dark, there's been a few light casters since 1864 like Nan and Aunt Delphine, but otherwise we always turn dark." She stopped talking for a moment and lifted her hand to look at the number etched into her skin. Thrusting her hand out to Damon, she finally looked up at him as he read the number.

_155_

"That's all Lena and I have left until our seventeenth birthdays." Her voice clear with sadness and disappointment as one of his hands wrapped around her own as he continued to study her hand like it was a piece of art.

"You're really that fixated on your birthday that you write down a new number everyday?" He asked as his thumb smudged over the dark ink.

"I have to be, it's all I have left before I stop caring about the people I love and instead just about how much power I have and how high up on the food chain I am." She let her hand drop from his abruptly. "Before I turn dark; before Lena turns dark."

Her eyes still continued to scan is face as he poured the cereal into the bowl, the crunchy flakes of cereal clanking with the bowl. She was worried about being so open with _him. _He's been around since Genevieve, so he could be an expert liar and manipulator, meaning he could be working for her mother and that's why he took such an instant liking to her.

As she thought of all the schemes Ridley, her mother, and Damon could have come up with together there was that small, nagging voice in the back of her mind that said that was not true. She had no clue why she felt that she could trust him so easily, or why she could automatically peg him as a friend and not one of her mother's minions. Maybe because they were the same person-to some extent-or that he understood her and she him.

"Zoe." Damon's deep voice pulled her out of her consuming thoughts. Humming in response, she looked to find him handing her the bowl full of milk and cereal. "I promise to try and make everyone of these days count for you." As she gingerly took the bowl from his hands, he turned to a drawer to grab her a spoon she assumed.

"Thank you, Damon, but you don't have.."

"I want to." He insisted suddenly, cutting her off to let her know that for these next one hundred and fifty-five days of his eternity he was going to make sure she was smiling, that she was laughing, that she was happy. Nothing but happy.

"Thank you." She said faintly before taking the spoon from his hands and dipping it into her cereal. As she shoved the spoonful of Frosted Flakes in her mouth she hummed in content. "Now, I get to ask you a question about being a vampire and what not." her mouth still half full of Frosted Flakes as she spoke, causing him to chuckle.

"Ask away, Menace." He said with an enthusiastic wave of his hand as he leaned on the opposing counter space. "If you ask me why I don't sparkle, I'm taking back my cereal."

She snorted in response as she shoved another spoonful of her very late breakfast into her mouth. "No." She titled her head back and up slightly so the cereal would stay in her mouth. "I know you being able to walk in the sunlight has something to do with that larger than large ring on your finger."

"You're exaggerating," He sing-songed slightly as he began twisting his ring around on his finger. "It's not that big."

"When you keep drawing attention to it, it is." She argued after swallowing the large lump of cereal in her mouth.

"How do I draw attention to it?" He scoffed, crossing his strong arms over his chest.

"You twist it around your finger all the time, and I picked up on it easily because always used to do that with my ring." Zoe informed as she set the bowl of cereal aside and unzipped her jacket before shrugging it off her shoulders, leaving her in her black tank top. Reaching into the article of clothing, she pulled out the hidden parts of her chain necklace that had the vampire had just noticed. On the end of the silver chain were two large silver bands that were almost identical with matching flecks of black in them.

Walking closer to her again, he took one of the rings in his hand gingerly, squinting his glacial eyes to read what was engraved on the ring.

_Zophia Hunter Duchannes. 1993-_

That part was left blank for when-he assumed-she died. Letting the ring drop from his fingers and gently bounce against the soft surface of her tank top. Picking up the other ing the same way, he expected it to be Lena's or maybe something of her uncles, but the name on the ring was unknown to him.

_Julia Emily Duchannes 1992-2009, Ridley Emily Duchannes 2009-_

"Two people on one ring, huh?" He asked letting the ring drop onto her chest like he did with the other wring.

"Nope." She responded, popping her 'p' as she grabbed the chain and dropped it back into her shirt. "It's the same person." Damon looked at her, his brows pulling together in confusion. "When you become dark, you change your name so you don't become attached to the memories of your old life, you change your name so that it's like looking at a friend's life, not your own. The years on the ring are for when we were born, obviously, and when we turn dark. If we turn light, then when we die they inscribe the year of death." She explained as she picked up her bowl and began eating again. "Now back to my question!" She demanded as she swallowed another mouthful of her crunchy breakfast. "How did you become a vampire?"

"Next question." Damon dodged her question and took a small yet noticeable step away from her.

"Damon." She whined and pushed another spoonful of cereal in her mouth.

"Don't whine, Menace, it doesn't suit you." He responded cooly, watching as she chewed half of the cereal in her mouth before swallowing roughly.

"Fine." She snapped as she let out a small cough from a piece of not-chewed cereal. "Where the hell did the nickname Menace come from?"

"I decided it fit after this morning with you almost killing me and all." He said as if it were to happened everyday.

"I did not almost _kill _you. I simply set your fingers on fire, or made them feel like the were on fire, and gave you an aneurism." She clarified proudly.

"Right, because that makes it so much better." He said sarcastically before walking out of the kitchen in search of a blood bag, leaving Zoe to eat her Frosted Flakes all by lonesome.

* * *

"Jeremy, Lena." Damon called-as if he had not killed the Gilbert boy a mere night ago-with his arm slung carelessly around Zoe's shoulders.

The two being called were standing by the concession stand, or one of many, Jeremy handing the man inside a dollar bill in exchange for a large bucket of popcorn as Lena looked up at him with that lovesick face that she possessed. The thought of Lena being in love with this boy already was not a good sign, and it made her twin's skin crawl just thinking about all the ways that the two of them could get hurt so badly just because stupid teenage love.

Jeremy and Lena both turned their heads at the sound of his voice, Jeremy grimacing noticeably and Lena tilting her head curiously at the man.

She did not know that _this_ was the man who had snapped Jeremy's neck last night, they just told her that his name was Damon and she had no clue that this man's name was Damon.

"Jeremy, so good to see you alive." He stated feigning cheerfulness as he sauntered over to the pair, Zoe's arm snaking around his waist.

"Aren't you a little old for a high-school carnival?" Jeremy asked as he took a small step away from the stand and closer to Lena.

"About a hundred and fifty years too old." Damon said as he grabbed a handful of popcorn and popped some pieces in his mouth before offering the rest to Zoe.

All of the sudden, the caster felt a sudden wave of nostalgia wash over her. She knew where it was from, and she did not like it one bit. This small gesture, that meant next to nothing to Damon, was just like Kol with his grapes and he had offered her the grapes when there were having a very deep and personal discussion about how much he actually meant to her.

Her chest tightened in sadness as she realized that she was never going to get to meet this man. He was as good as dead by now, because of what she could tell from the dreams it was about the ninth century, and no one could live that long. She realized that as her heart was building up the feelings of love and longing for him, that he was never going to be anything more then an attractive man in her dreams.

Looking up to Damon, she gave a him a shake of her head with a small, gracious smile on her lips as she did so. She let out the smallest of snorts when he just shrugged and popped the remaining pieces in his mouth.

Jeremy let out a humorless chuckle. "You're pretty funny cracking jokes when I could, I don't know, blow the whole lid off this thing by telling someone what you really are." Throughout Jeremy's entire declaration, Damon just had this smirk on his face as he chewed the popcorn, that was wild and triumphant. It was completely obvious to the twin's that Damon probably was not all that in tuned to what the teenage boy was actually saying.

The vampire looked thoughtful for a moment as he set down the bucket of popcorn and untangled himself from's Zoe causal stance. Grabbing the back of the Gilbert's neck and shoulder, Damon pushed the two of them off to the side leaving Lena and Zoe alone to chat amongst each other.

"Is that _the_ vampire who killed Jeremy last night?" Lena whispered incredulously as she took a step closer to her twin. Zoe nodded her head to her sister as if it were obvious. "And you saunter in here with his arm around your shoulders like your some couple?"

"If we were some couple, their would be a lot more public displays of affection then his arm around my shoulder, sister." She pointed out knowingly as she rolled her eyes in annoyance. "I've been with him all day, and I'm not dead."

"All day?" Her incredulous tone not bothering to cease as she let her fists unclench at her sides showing her exasperation. Lena's hair began to curl and uncurl, the moving curls in sync with her inhaling and exhaling.

"Yes, Lena dearest, all day." Zoe's annoyance building up at her sister's dramatics.

"He's not even that bad! As long as you don't piss him off of course." The curls in her hair began to curl and uncurl as well with every clenching and unclenching movement of her fists. "You're making my hair curl as well as your's Lena, just leave it alone and we'll talk about it at home."

"No Zoe! I'm not going to leave it until we get home because, what happens when you do piss him off?" Lena asked as her voice raised an octave in anger, trying to make it visible to her sister that this was not the people she wanted Zoe to hangout with, or that Macon would want Zoe to hangout with.

"We have similar personalities." She responded through gritted white-teeth. "Lena I'm telling you, leave it alone until later."

"So you mean there's another rude, egotistical, fault finder in this town?" Lena insulted, ignoring Zoe's protests of their magic.

"Yup." She said popping the 'p' "That's exactly what I'm saying." It was clear that the other twin was so blinded by her anger at Zoe for hanging out with the eldest Salvatore all day, so she simply brushed past her sister.

As she stopped right next to the raven-haired vampire, she had to put a hand over her lips to suppress the small hint of laughter that dared to pass her lips when she watched as Damon simply tossed the ring at Jeremy's head, connecting to his thick skull with a loud clunk. Casting the girl he had spent his entire day with a look, his lips turned upwards slightly at the joyous look on her face.

"Look at the, she smiles!" Damon cheered as he turned his full attention to his favorite Duchannes twin.

"You act as if I've had a pout on my face on all day, Damon." She said with a full roll of her eyes as she stood crookedly on her one foot.

The vampire flashed her a brief smirk before he tilted his head in the direction from the way they came from, indicating that they go that way since it was only booths of food and games not obnoxious carnival rides.

Turning on her heels she walked past her sister once again-only this time going the opposite way-deliberately colliding their shoulders as she did so. She was pissed at her sister, and she had a right to be! Lena just called her an egotistical, rude, fault finder, which basically meant bitch but fault finder is a unisex word so she could insult both Zoe and Damon at the same time.

"So, Ms. Egotistical, what would you like to do next?" He asked, appearing at her side in less that a millisecond.

"You heard that?" She disputed as she shoved her hands into her back pockets. When Damon nodded his head in a yes motion, she frowned slightly. "Well, thanks for not snapping my sister's neck or anything."

"I was too busy with Jeremy to snap her neck." He said nonchalantly, making Zoe halt before taking her next step. She glared at the back of his head evilly until he stopped walking and turned back to look at her. "Plus, I promised you a happy one hundred and fifty-five days, didn't I?"

* * *

Dark eyes darted between the walls that were covered in cheap decoration, internally trembling with disgust. Her hands dug deep into the back pockets of her dark pants as she continued to walk hastily through the hallways in hopes to just find someone she knew.

She left Damon maybe ten minutes ago to use the ladies room, but was ultimately dragged away from her destination by Elena who needed help restocking one of the dozens of game booths. Luckily, Zoe was able to wave her hand in a certain way and the booth restocked itself. When she went back to the spot in a dimly lit hallway where she stood with the the raven-haired moments ago, he was not there. So now, she was walking around aimlessly looking for him or her sister or possibly even Bonnie or Elena.

"Zoe." A voice called, one she instantly recognized as the vampire she was looking for. Turning her head slightly to the right, she saw him standing rigidly in front of his brother with his arms crossed tightly against his chest. She wasted no time in walking over to him and his brother and away from the crowd of various faces that she did not know. "Are there any other types of supernatural creatures, Zoe?"

She furrowed her brows, digging her hands deeper into her pockets if that was even possible. "Uh.." Licking her lips she thought about all of the things that Nan, Macon, and Delphine had told her and her twin when they were kids. All of the mythological stories they loved to tell. "You know about vampires obviously, witches, dopplegangers, and casters, but there are different types of dark casters and different types of light there are the incubus and succubus, but don't really involve themselves with any other species besides their own species, casters, or humans. "

"Can a dark casters have close to the strength that a vampire has?" Damon asked her as his lips began to purse and he looked down at her expectantly.

"No." She said immediately. "Not unless they are possessing a vampire."

"What is up with that family?" Damon asked bitterly to no one in particular as his head looked around the crowded hallway was cautiously. "If they're not vampires then what the hell are they?"

"Oh uh, maybe their um ninja turtles." Stefan suggested causing the caster beside Damon to let out a small laugh. Damon looked at his brother exasperatedly, his nose wrinkling in a 'I cannot believe you' kind of way.

"You're not funny." The elder Salvatore admitted in an annoyed tone.

"I thought it was funny." Zoe interjected, giving the younger vampire a small smile before Damon turned his head towards her with his nose wrinkled in the same way.

"Or no, zombies!" Stefan said pulling his brother's attention away from the girl and back to him. "Werewolves?"

"No comedic timing, at all." As Damon said this, a lopsided grin stretched across Stefan's lips and another small laugh left the caster's lips. This was really the first time that Zoe had actually talked to Stefan and she could not say that she liked him as much as she liked his brother, but she did not find him irritating like she found Jeremy Gilbert's company to be.

She watched as the grin on Stefan's face fell, causing her's to fall as well, when Damon turned his head behind the three of them to the man fixing one of the soundboards the school had set up.

Zoe could already predict what was going to happen without using her magic. Damon was going to do that mind control thing called compulsion on the poor man to mess with the Lockwood uncle, get a rise out of him, so that Damon could see what the man truly was.

Even though she did not get a good feeling from the Lockwood boy or his uncle, she still had no desire to mess with their family or their family secret. She knew what it felt like to be invaded, like every person would turn their head at any and every given moment to glance at the freak show. Her and Lena knew what it felt like to be rejected by the people thought to be the closest to them or just by the people that they would wave to everyday on their walk home from elementary school. It sucked.

"What? What're you up to?" Stefan asked frantically, regaining his brother's attention as he had hoped to do so.

"Since it's reality," Damon began, looking down at the small hand that had managed to wrap itself around his forearm before casting his eyes upward to his brother. "And there's no such thing as werewolves or combat turtles.." He trailed of, pulling his arm out of the girl's grip and walking over to the man he was looking at before.

"It's actually ninja turtles and.." Stefan corrected from behind him, but instantly shut his mouth when his brother began talking to the maintenance man.

"Hey, you." Damon said, nodding his head in greeting.

"I have a name." The man scoffed before averting his undivided attention from the raven-haired vampire and the two people that suddenly appeared next to him and back to the box of wires and electrical things that looked like a big ball of confusion to Zoe.

"Yeah, I don't care." Damon said in a deadly serious tone as he grabbed the man's shoulders casually and turned the man to look at him. Before Damon could do anything, Zoe had stepped between the two, putting the palm of her right an on his chest.

"Damon, just let it go." She pleaded, not really wanting to see the vampire compelling this innocent man to do something stupid or reckless. "Macon knows the Lockwoods, I could ask him about it, find out for you."

"Yeah?" The vampire asked her, looking away from the dark skinned man to look down at her. He could see the clear worry in her eyes for this man and the clear desperation for him to just listen to her, and it was the only time that her eyes had really any sign of emotion all day except for the whole ordeal with Carol Lockwood about how beautiful Zoe had gotten since she was a child. "And what if he knows nothing?"

"Then we'll ask Nan about what she knows about the Lockwoods." She said hopefully, and she thought she had persuaded him to not compel the poor man when he continued to stare at her with his crystalline irises. Unfortunately luck was not on her side when Damon looked back up at the man, his hands clamping down on his shoulders firmly as if to remind him that he was still there and the he was going to be compelled.

"I need you to pick a fight with someone." Damon said and Zoe felt her blood boil. "A kid named Tyler Lockwood."

"Damon don't do this." Stefan said half heartily over his brother's shoulder. Damon wiggled his fingers at his brother-not allowing to take his eyes off the man before him-as it were a sign for him to go away, and it probably was.

"No, it's just an experiment." His tone irrational as his hand was placed on the man's shoulder again. Damon gave his shoulder a good squeeze as he continued speaking. "Get him mad, but don't back down. No matter what he does. Okay?"

She wanted to scream at him, to punch him in the chest repeatedly until it actually hurt, she wanted to use her magic to transport him into to 3010, where he would be alone with people he did not know. But, she couldn't. She stood between the two men, fascinated at how this compulsion thing worked. Being herself, she was smart enough to not look Damon straight in the eye so she turned to the other man instead and watched his pupils dilate uncontrollably under Damon's mind spell.

As she watched this unfold right in front of her, she realized that he had every right to do this. This was his town, he was protecting it by not letting an unknown supernatural threat stay unknown. Zoe knew that he would never admit that he was trying to protect this town, from spending a full day with the vampire she knew how prideful and stubborn he was. He would most likely give her some snide response that he was curious or that she should worry about something else like her birthday being so soon.

She also realized that he was right about he uncle. He knew something, she knew that much because he would not have blindly trusted the people of this town like Jenna, the Lockwoods, and Sheriff Forbes, without doing a little digging first. Plus, he would not have let the twins walk into a school without him knowing anyone first, so he had to have known something, but he would never tell her. It took him and her grandmother eight years to learn about her own mother. Imagine how long it would take for him to tell her about the werewolves.

"I won't back down." The deep, robotic tone of his voice had pulled Zoe from her state of analyzation and realization. Turning slowly, she looked at the Salvatore whose lips had began to twitch into a small smirk as he voiced,

"I know you won't."

As the man began to walk away, Damon slid his arm slowly around the man's shoulders and gave him an encouraging, slow pat on the back before sending him off like a mother bird sending of her baby bird.

"You do realize somebody is going to get hurt, right?" Stefan asked his brother in a calm yet angry tone that Zoe could not quite wrap her head around, but did not pay much attention to it.

"No, someone's gonna get mad." Damon drawled as he straightened his back out and wrapped an arm around the caster girl's shoulders, pulling her into him. Their bodies collided with a soft thud and a small groan from the back of her throat, but nonetheless she crossed her arms tightly over her middle and leaned into him ever so slightly. "As in rage."

"Well, what's that gonna accomplish?" Stefan crossed his arms over his chest tightly, shaking his head vigorously as he spoke.

"That Tyler kid is incapable of walking away from a fight." Damon informed sourly. "Let's see who intervenes, maybe it's the ambiguously, supernatural, mystery uncle."

* * *

"Hey." Zoe said in a tired tone as she walked away from the loud, buzzing school lot that her sister was lost in. She shoved her hand deep into her pocket and pressed the phone to her ear with the other as she aimlessly walked away from the carnival.

"_Having a good time, Zophia?_" Her Uncle Macon teased over the phone.

"Better than I expected." She admitted with a small shrug of her shoulders. If it had not been for her entire day with Damon, then she would be in the worst of moods as she took a backseat to Jeremy and Lena's love fest or she could have been helping Elena all day. Both of those thoughts were as horrifying as the other.

"_You know what they say, Zophia. Expected the unexpected._" He said knowingly through the telephone line.

"How cliche of you, Uncle Macon." She responded with a roll of her eyes, pushing a lock of her hair behind her ear. She looked up from her shoes and opened her mouth to continue on with the conversation, but she caught sight of her favorite vampire, nodding his head for her to follow him. "I'll call you back later, Lena wants me to go on the Tilt-a-Whirl with her." Without waiting for a response or a goodbye, she hung up the phone abruptly and shoved it into her back pocket before running-well, jogging-towards him.

"We have a _slight_ problem." Damon said as soon as she reached his side. He grabbed her hand forcefully, tugging her along with him as he trekked speedily through the parking lot of the school. Zoe's eyes frantically looked around her and Damon, the only thing stood out to her majorly was the wooden stake in the hand that was not locked with hers.

"Damon?" She questioned they came to an abrupt halt, causing her to collide into the back of him because she was more worried about the stake in his hand. "What are you going to do with that.."

The vampire in question craned his neck to look back at his favorite caster, his icicle eyes silencing her immediately. Smirking in clear satisfactory, he turned back to look at the reason why they had stopped.

They were way in the back of the barking lot now, where all of the trailers for the rides sat until they were ready to be loaded again. Zoe did not like being out here, not one bit, but she knew that she was somewhat safe with Damon around or so she hoped. As her hand dropped to her side, signaling that he had let go of her, that hope was soon out the window.

He walked up to the blonde woman-who Zoe only realized was there now-and set a comforting hand on her thigh as she sat on one of the many trailers, looking down and feeling bad for herself.

"He's dead." Her voice was eerily calm as she spoke, her shoulders slumping in remorse and guilt."I killed him." Damon looked back at the body briefly, identifying it as the man he had compelled to fight Tyler Lockwood, before looking back at the blonde. It was like as she was saying this, she had finally realized what she had done because she started to hyperventilate and tears escaped her eyes rapidly. "What's wrong with me?"

Zoe walked over to the two of them slowly, waiting for any objections or signals from Damon that she should not be doing what she was doing. With every step she took, she was hoping he would turn around and give her the glare that had shut her up more than once today, or for him to stick out his hand discreetly, but he never did and she did not realize that until she was standing right by his side, in front of the bloody teenager.

"Hey." Damon said, his tone matching her voice's eery calmness, his hand going from her leg to her back. "Hey, it's okay. I can help you."

"You can?" She asked disbelievingly as her nails dug deep into the hardwood surface of the trailer, her body rocking back and forth slightly as loud, short breaths escaped her lips.

"Yeah, I have to." He said, letting his fingers dance down the sleeve of her jacket and to her pant legs as he moved in front of her.

"What're you gonna do?" She questioned slowly.

"The only thing I can do." He said feigning concern, reaching up he used two of his fingers and his thumb to brush away a large portion of her bangs; revealing more of her blooded face to him and Zoe. "I'm gonna kill you." He rubbed a soothing line into the side of Caroline's face with his thumb as he pressed the dull side of the stake in to her thigh, letting her know that it was there.

She jumped down from the trailer instantaneously, causing Zoe to take three steps back. The blonde placed her hands in the hair in a way to tell Damon to stay away from her. The raven-haired vampire only rolled his eyes impatiently and leaned his side against the trailer.

"Please don't." She sobbed, her voice wavering dramatically as she lowered her hands. "I don't want to die." She tried to sound strong, but her voice kept breaking as more sobs escaped her.

"Damon, you don't have to kill her." Zoe spoke up softly from the sidelines. Earlier that day, Damon had told her about being a vampire, and being a vampire intensifies everything including emotions which the caster could clearly tell that in this situation, that was definitely the case. "She's new at this whole vampire thing, her emotions are going haywire.."

"Zoe." The raven-haired vampire snapped at her, turning his head to give her the glare that would shut her up, but this time it had no affect.

She did not know where this sudden boost of confidence came from, but she liked it. "Don't Zoe me." She snapped back like a child as she took a small step closer to the pair. "She doesn't have to die, just give her a chance, let her grow into her new vampire skin."

"A neurotic, over-controlling barbie times ten, Zoe. Imagine how difficult that would make our lives." His tone bitter as he pushed himself off of the trailer and inched towards her.

"I only have one hundred and fifty-five days of my life left, Damon." She stopped to stand in front of her Caroline, her one shoulder facing the blonde vampire and the other shoulder facing the vampire with hair as dark as midnight. "Not a god damn eternity like you do, or she does."

"Just help me, please, please!" The vampire's hoarse and desperate made the two power hungry beings realize that they had an audience. Both turned their heads to look at the blonde, and the Zoe did not really know what happened. All she could tell was that the newbie vampire's arms were wrapped around the caster tightly, cutting off almost all breathing for the girl who needed to breathe. Not really knowing what to do, Zoe stood like a statue in the girls arms looking at Damon for help-who just held up the stake in his hand as if saying it was the only option-yet he did nothing to aid her.

Awkwardly, she wrapped her arms around the unknown blonde and gave her back a soothing pat once or twice. Her chin rested gently on the girl's scalp as she continued to sob into Zoe's leather jacket; staining it with mascara and tears.

Zoe closed her eyes for just one quick second as another wave of fatigue hit her for what seemed to be like the millionth time today. She really wished she had not closed her eyes though, because as soon as she did everything went completely black.

* * *

_One of his hands were placed over her eyes, shielding her from seeing where she was going, and the other was placed gently on her hip; guiding her legs which way to turn and when to stop. As he subconsciously traced the bone of her hip with the pad of his thumb, she had to admit that it felt more then good, but she did not dare say a word. She just kept her eyes shut under the clasp of his hand and her lips stretched into a smile as they continued to walk silently throughout the woods. _

"_All right," She huffed, breaking their comfortable silence "Where are going, Kolton?" _

"_Ooh, you're annoyed with me." He cooed cheekily in her ear, his breathing ghosting over the canvas of her neck as he did so. "We'll be there soon, ma belle Zophia." Zoe giggled lightly as her checks grew hot from all of the blood rising to them. _

"_No." She scolded both herself and him. "You are not allowed to use the French language to make me swoon over you, Kolton."_

"_Ooh, but I already did." He said unapologetically as he stopped her from walking to lean around her shoulder and peck her rose colored cheeks._

* * *

**_A/N; Sorry for such a short little flashback at the end right there but I am so exhausted and I want to post this today, so yeah. Love you guys, have a wonderful Valentine's Day!_**

**_-Morgan Buzolic_**


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